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"1st Amendment Under Siege" Recently last year (May,2016) Arkansas Department of Correction Czarina Wendy Kelly issued a rather fastidious policy that cited newspaper clippings would be banned from prisoner mail, classifying them as (wait for it - with bated breath) "contraband"!? According [ineligible] to ADC (Ay, Carumba! Arkansas Department of Corruption) policy, they are... concerned about drug smuggling but said vitiated policy does not affect newspapers sent directly...

2014 Legislative Session Will Prove Whether Policy Makers Have Gotten Smart on Crime By Roland Marshall Only time will reveal whether the 2014 Legislative Session will mark a sincere effort by Louisiana's lawmakers to reform sentencing laws so that offenders can have a meaningful opportunity to get off the count. At the behest of the Jindal administration, four organizations joined in a collective effort to analyze criminal justice data/ statistics and offer options to assist Louisiana l...

h i Cja^ 4993 W o r d Essay At the age of sixteen I was incarcerated for First Degree Murder and later sentenced to 77-years in prison. There seemed to be httle consideration of the affects it would have on a teenager to be housed with adults. Fortunately for me I was a fighter. There is a strange unwritten rule in prison that if somebody is willing to stick up for himself from day one then other prisoners will be willing to help him. If you don't stand up for yourself then you are left ...

A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE DEMISE OF THE COLORADO DEPT . OF CORRECTIONS AND POOR DRUG OFFENDER REFORM by: Stephan Darris While incarcerated in the state of Colorado I think it' s fair to say that your past dictates your future . I am not a lifer or a violent offe nder. I am a repeat drug offender that has witnessed some of the most vile atrocity ' s that the system can deliver. I think that most people in this institution live under propaganda, false hope, and make believe promises. It ...

No Title A day before my 18th birthday I was arrested in Milwaukee WI for possession with intent to deliver. I was sentenced to 9 years under the Wisconsin Truth in Sentencing Act. The judge ordered me to do 3 years inside and 6 years on mandatory supervision. Most of the 3 years was spent at the Robert E. Ellsworth Correctional Center (R.E.E.C.C.). At REECC I obtained my HSED in 2002. To get into the Office Assistant college course through Gateway Tech, I had to steal a cookie. My being empl...

A DAY IN MY LIFE Awakened by the brilliance of 6:00AM lights, I arise, grab my toiletries and walk down the long, stale white corridor toward the restroom. First, I must wade through a bevy of inmates blocking my path while vehemently discussing lat night's televised basketball game. These men do so without any consideration for those still trying to sleep or pass through. I step across the threshold and into a room with two rows of sinks where all sorts of men — white, black, Mexican, t...

A Day in the Life of Time My name is Eric. I was born and raised in St.Louis, but for the past 34 years I have been in prison in Missouri. I have been in the South East Correctional Center at Charleston, Missouri for seven years now. When I was 21, I was sentenced to 50 years without the possibility of parole for killing a young man who was trying to rob my younger brother. I did not have a prison record. Very few people have any idea what it is like to be incarcerated for decades. Here is wh...

A Lesson in Language Incarceration has forced me to postpone my plans of travelling to the continents of Europe and Asia. Six years into a twenty year sentence for manslaughter, watching Globe Trekker on PBS or flipping through vacation mags in the prison library is the closest I get. My travels into Quebec and Mexico taught me that every street sign, television or radio program, menu, and all product packaging provides a lesson in language. Simply going about a regular routine in a foreign l...

I wish you could be witness to the enrichment and achievement, the intellectual stimulation, and the soulful creative expression going on during the Prison Performing Arts theater and "spoken word" poetry classes in WERDCE, the women's prison in Vandalia, MO and Thursdays and in the men's prison down the road in Bowling Green, MO, on Fridays. PPA is a non-profit organization based in St.Louis, MO, which provides opportunities for personal growth and character development t...

A lot has been written Original Dorotik CA A lot has been written about the prison system lately -- why we as a nation incarcerate so many, why the bureauocratic and unweildy system is only expected to make minimal cuts to its 11 billion dollar budget while education and social supports are slashed to the very core, why California's prison system has the highest recidivism rate of any state in the nation? But little is written of the individual suffering that occurs in devastating ways o...

A Perspective on Prison By Michael B. Beverley When I was a boy, my mother often said that one-day people would no longer have names, we would be known only by a number. I know she didn’t mean what I would bring upon myself, yet it is not entirely disingenuous to say I am now known as 78552. That is my inmate ID within the New Hampshire state prison system. However, I would rather be remembered as Michael. Though I am now a felon, it wasn’t how my life began. I was the third of eight children...

No Title A professor once asked me if I believed in evolution or history repeating itself. I leaned towards history repeating itself, after all evolution just seems to be the same ole same ole with a few tweaks to make a thing modern. Take the U.S. history for instance, the slave trade and indentured servants are today called prisoners. When the Fore Fathers hammered out the Constitution in that hot sweaty room they had to compromise. The southern states wanted to count their slaves in the po...

Anna MI Vanderford OK A Word to the Fish I don't know why they call new arrivals "fish", perhaps because you feel like a fish out of water, when you arrive in prison. My mom was an old Jewish lady, old by even the standard of other parents. She was really old enough to be my grandmother when she and her retired husband adopted me. She used to say ,"You can't put an old head on: young shoulders." I'm not sure that I ever knew what that meant nor cared. Howeve...

A.V.P. How can violence be reduced in prison? Well, in my own opinion, the answer is simple: support the "Alternative to Violence Project!" This program, started by Quaker's back in the late 1970's right here at Green Haven Correctional Facility, is one which is now being used to combat the spread and use of violence all over the world. The Alternative to Violence Project (from this point on, to be referred to as A.V.P.) is an interactive workshop, that gives insight to it...

Addendum to #32392 Commutation Application: Sylvia Boykin In my own Words, these are the detailed facts of my crime and how I was involved: On May 15, 1992 at around 1:30pm in Philadelphia, PA, I drove Aaron Jones and Antwan Blagman to the residence of Mrs. Pope for the purpose of collecting money owed for illegal drugs. We planned to peacefully collect the money. While inside the residence of Mrs. Pope, I asked her for the money and she told me she didn’t have it. I went back to the car to t...

ALONE Alas, I am alone and destined to remain so. No longer can the burning, innate longing for love, companionship and re-affirmation of my worth reverberate inside my heart and mind. Is this due to years apart from others? Or is it because of my transgressions that I am left with no choice but to accept the exile society will impose that separates me even from those who ODCG felt affection from and for me? Once thrust back into the world from which I am now ten years removed, it would be fo...

An American Epidemic Do you remember when you were naive enough to believe you were invincible? Now, imagine yourself as that kid and being told your whole life is being stripped from you before you've even had the opportunity to know what it feels like to live by your own rules. Are you there? Can you see it? Can you feel it? Good! Sadly and tragically this scenario is much more than an image cooked up by one's imagination. American is facing a tragedy of epic proportions; an epide...

Anger Anger for me is unachievable. I am though certainly no pacifist. I don't spurn anger, hostility, or even vindictiveness. Such feelings are simply beyond my reach. Some would regard me as fortunate; say the world would benefit from more like me;‘ or argue that anger holds no value. Such sentiment alas is naive, even risible. There are man like m self. Peo le for whom roactive emotions are lost to a resolve of ho elessness where resorts to _ P gestures preclude the inducement of ange...

ANXIETY Like a leaking cistern, anxiety,slowly bleeds all semblance of life from one'sA A being. As soon as a rare detente is reached, another anguishing tempest appears .atop life's mountains of Volatile, tormenting emotions pressing everything below until the-cavity of one's heart is breached further, causing one's will to demit faster, more excruciatingly that before. Eventually, anxiety morphs into a depressed emptiness offering only a teasing, hollow eye in a storm th...

Taryanne Rahmaan, "As a Black Muslim" Coffee Creek Correctional Facility As a Black muslim, in prison where I have three strikes... (one, I am Black, two. I am muslim, three. I am female) everyday is a struggle. As if it isn't enough to just take my freedom, they want to take my dreams, my hope, and my faith I may still have. They refuse to give me pork substitutes or anything resembling a Halal diet. They deny me the right to cover my hair outside of my cell, and each year ram...

NO TITLE By: April Dawn Pineda As of today July 31st 2017, I sit in my 10 by 4 concrete cell with a blue steel door, with no visability out a purposely fogged out window, (so we can't see the sky, for what reason I do not know) with a hatch for our meals in a maximum level 4 unit locked down for 23 hours a day to the beat of commercials, banging, clanging and screaming at all hours of the day. I'm at Elmwood Correctional facility in Milpitas California and have been in maximum level...

12/12/2016 Autobiography of an incarcerated sex offender This is my first essay for the APWA. I will give some general background of my childhood, then tell of my incarceration experience. My name is Daniel Isaac Senior. I am forthcoming about my own life, but I do ask that my family remains anonymous. Please do not look them up or try to contact them. I recognize the purpose of this archive is to teach and learn about the United States criminal justice system and therefore my personal life i...

;a~7se2,~ ;3.:2Q2«[/c<:“=§§C:~+.:£ we o wand ,<5g'-4:,»-/774:3 /‘V Czar?”-574%!/% 7'" /A H’ 2% ‘f 3 Greetings from California! As atransgender woman prisoner and activist, I welcome this opportunity to contribute to the discussion on Solitary Conﬁnement. Initially, I was convicted for the crime of armed robbery and sentenced to seven years in state prison. Subsequently, however, that "7 years" was extended to an indeterminate term of 104 years-to—life under the ...

Betrayal By Larry “Rocky " Harris Everyday across America, the innocent are sent to prison. This is an ugly fact that most citizens of this great country do not want to deal with. It is not a topic that will come up over cocktails with friends. I The segment of the American population involved in this nightmare is usually the poor, speciﬁcally a poor man sold out by the public defender appointed to the criminal case. The case I write about falls into this category: a poor man raising his...